> Sorry, but you've lost sight of the forest. The salient fact is that
> Indo-European "succeeded so strongly - overwhelmingly, in fact"
> *everywhere*. It is therefore not at all awkward that it succeeded
> in any one spot. The awkwardness comes if you can't explain why it
> *failed* in only one particular spot. That one spot happens to be the
> Basques. Well, of course, we know that the Etruscans spoke a non-IE
> language, but they were cultural intruders and quite likely brought
> their language by sea from elsewhere. Incidentally, we have no idea
> whether the Etruscan language was spoken by all strata of their society,
> and we *do* know that the language disappeared quite rapidly when
> political power was removed.
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I think you missed my point. W. Europe is disproportionately R1b. If R1b
were non-Indo-European, then the awkward thing that needs explaining is how
Indo-European so thoroughly triumphed there. The fact that a non-IE language
survived only among a small, somewhat unique ethnic minority in the Pyrenees
tells against R1b being non-Indo-European and not the other way around.

Etruscan did not long survive.

And Albanian, which you mentioned in your post, is an Indo-European
language.

Magyar, or Hungarian, can be accounted for historically and is not really
relevant to this discussion.
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Rich wrote:

>> Why is there such an apparent correspondence between the
>> East/West-satem/centum split in Indo-European and the East/West-R1a/R1b
>> split in y-haplogroup R? Coincidence?
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>
> You're reading far too much into far too little.
>
> John Chandler
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That's what I think the advocates of the "indigenous R1b" speculation are
doing.

I don't know of any linguist who disputes the basic East/West division of
Indo-European languages into satem and centum.

Are you saying the apparent correspondence between that split and the
East/West-R1a/R1b split in y-haplogroup R is just a coincidence?

I guess that is one way to explain it, although it doesn't really jive with
what we know of the predominant y-haplogroups among European speakers of
centum Indo-European languages.